Several arrests made in kidnapping-homicide case

LIVE OAK >> The Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office has announced the arrest of “several suspects” Tuesday in connection with last year’s kidnapping-homicide case of Tushar Atre.

The Sheriff’s Office is delaying release of the suspected killer’s identities until Thursday, department spokeswoman Ashley Keehn said.

Atre, 50, was kidnapped Oct. 1 from his waterfront Pleasure Point home, a crime the Sheriff’s Office officials believe was motivated by a robbery. Investigators located a deceased Atre, who had been shot, around 10 a.m. that day in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Atre’s body was in the car in which he was kidnapped — his own BMW — and parked at a Soquel San Jose Road property he owned.

During an investigation update in January, Sheriff Jim Hart released video surveillance footage of a bicyclist and later three men walking near Atre’s Pleasure Point Drive home and said that his investigators had issued more than 30 search warrants connected to the case.

Community members banded together to anonymously offer a cash reward that was increased multiple times for anyone who could offer successful leads in the mysterious killing. The latest reward offering of $200,000 had a July 22 deadline and was the highest in the department’s history, officials said.

Atre, born in Germany and raised in New York, moved in 1996 to the Santa Cruz area, where he founded the web design agency, AtreNet. More recently, Atre cofounded Interstitial Systems, a Santa Cruz-based licensed cannabis manufacturer.